Falling Apart by Jane Lovering Read Free Book Online

neither flattered myself that Zan had any feelings for me other than the mild contempt he held for all humans, nor feared that he would suddenly attack me, there was something about his behaviour that was making me uneasy.
    â€˜Jessica.’ He stopped speaking and shuffled his hands. ‘You and Sil, you have a … connection, yes?’
    â€˜Well, he says so. I can’t feel anything.’
    â€˜Nevertheless. You dreamed he was in trouble?’
    â€˜I dreamed he was going to kill me, actually.’ Tattered remnants of the dream flickered in my mind, like small flags of memory. ‘He …’ I rubbed at my forehead to try to eradicate those last traces. ‘It was scary.’
    â€˜Then this may be very bad. I fear your connection has somehow created a link to his current emotional state.’
    â€˜You seem to think he’s gone somewhere to … do vampire things.’
    Zan inclined his head. ‘It is a logical assumption. He would not confess such to me; he knows my opinion of such practices.’ He managed to get such a degree of disgust into his tone that I almost had sympathy for Sil wanting to indulge himself. ‘He would not want you to know because he would not wish to hurt you. I have no idea why, since you seem to lack emotional sensibilities of any kind, but that is beside the point.’
    I almost retorted at this point, but bit down the words. If Zan really wanted to think of me as unemotional, then that was probably for the best.
    â€˜I can only hope that he has not let his desires get too much the better of him,’ Zan went on. ‘If, as your dream would suggest, he is killing, then we must hope he has had the sense to keep the expression of his desires to the lower classes. These “clean-up campaigns”, as they are so regrettably called, can be so demanding of one’s time and energies.’
    â€˜You really are horrible, aren’t you?’ I muttered.
    Zan turned away from me and moved towards the door. ‘I am vampire, Jessica,’ he said. ‘And you …’ He sighed. ‘We must work to maintain the fiction of your being purely human.’
    Liam and Harry’s faces floated around in the back of my mind. Seven people know I’m not completely human. Nine, if you count my parents – the nine people I am closest to in all the world. Well, not Eleanor from Enforcement, obviously. I wouldn’t be close to her if you stuffed both of us into a bucket. ‘What do you mean?’
    Zan sighed again. ‘Don’t be obtuse, Jessica. We have had this conversation before.’ He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.
    â€˜Can we, just for a second and for the sake of argument, pretend that I’ve forgotten?’
    â€˜Fine.’ He let his hand drop and turned around. Now the streetlight positively glistened on his alabaster skin. There were no imperfections, not even a trace of stubble marking his perfect face – he looked a bit like Prince Caspian, if Prince Caspian had hated dirt and had a series of obsessional behaviours. ‘Then let me clarify matters for you,
for the sake of argument.
’ He did that slow, stalky stride thing that made him look like he had heron in his ancestry. ‘Jessica. Other factions, by which I mean the weres, wights, ghouls, Shadows and others, may decide to stage an uprising to attempt to overthrow vampire control. If this is achieved, and vampires are no longer able to keep Otherworlders in check, then anarchy may break out as various groups struggle for control. Now, taking this as a posit, and further speculating on the desire of those who know of your ancestry to bargain for the safety of themselves and their families, we may extrapolate a future where
you
, as the surviving offspring of an incredibly powerful and semi-immortal demon, may become a figurehead and rallying point for those who wish to overthrow humans altogether.’ He